Keywords

“Like you today,” broadcast journalist Christiane Amanpour
told the Harvard College class of 2010, “I also am holding my breath and
jumping into the unknown.”

As Amanpour prepares to leave CNN, after 27 years, to host a
weekly program on ABC, she has more in common with the graduating seniors than
they realize, she said, and offered some lessons learned since her own
graduation from the University of Rhode Island in 1983.

Her Class Day address quoted advice from a filmmaker-photographer friend of hers:

The fundamental thing about the process of being an artist
is failure. You have to learn to accept that you are going to fail at times;
that it is similarly important for your critics, your audience, and your peers
to understand that failure is part of growth; that there’s nothing wrong with
failure. You fail or fall, and then you pick yourself up again.

Amanpour, who since 1992 has been CNN’s chief international
correspondent, spoke about being a young woman in Iran when “revolution
rumbled across my country.” It “forced me to suddenly become an adult in a
turbulent world, after a calm and privileged childhood,” she said.

That awakening led her to pursue a career with CNN in
Atlanta, where she arrived in 1983 with $100, a suitcase, and a bicycle, she
recalled. “I wanted to be roaming the world,” she said. “I wanted to be telling stories.” No matter what career they choose, Amanpour urged the graduates to travel, to learn from other cultures—and to share their own values with foreigners.

She noted how little has changed since 1947, when
then-Secretary of State George Marshall announced the Marshall Plan during a
Commencement speech at Harvard. “The people of this country,” Marshall said in
his speech, “are distant from the troubled areas of the earth and it is hard
for them to comprehend.” That, she said, “is precisely the same today.”

She challenged the graduates to live life “fully
informed, fully aware, and fully on board.” And she voiced hopes that some of
them would do this by entering the demanding (and sometimes dangerous), but
powerful, field of journalism. “I am,” she said, “a true believer in the power
of this profession to be a force for good.”

Amanpour, who has interviewed a long list of world leaders,
including Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Yasser Arafat, and
Robert Mugabe, and who has reported from conflict and disaster zones including
Iraq, Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, and New Orleans, is known for breaking new ground
for female journalists. True to this role, when she quoted from Theodore Roosevelt, Amanpour took care to update his words for modern times:

It is not the critic who counts….The credit belongs to the
man and woman who is actually in the
arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly;
who errs, who comes short again and again….who knows great enthusiasms, great
devotions; who spends himself or herself in
a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high
achievement, and who at the worst, if he or
she fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his or her place shall never be with those
cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Many of this year’s Commencement week speeches have focused
on graduating in a down economy and generally uncertain times, but Amanpour took
issue with this defensive tone. “Yes, it is difficult,” she said, “but there
are incredible opportunities.”

Above all, she said, “Vow never, ever to sit on the
sidelines of life—ever.”

In her speech, “Anatomy of the ‘If,’” MacKenzie Sigalos ’10 said
she believes her classmates push themselves so hard because “complacency and
stagnation are far more daunting than this never-ending propulsion.” Harvard
students are used to being told that all possible life choices are open to
them; “we’ve already made a lot of those choices,” she said, and “most of us
haven’t realized it yet.” As “what if” becomes “what is,” Sigalos said, it’s
important to keep in mind that “fear does not lead to paralysis, but instead,
this vulnerability can push us to a new level of introspection and
self-discovery.”

Benjamin Schwartz ’10 drew on words that T.S. Eliot, A.B. 1910,
A.M. ’11, wrote on his departure from Harvard College: “We turn as thy sons
ever turn, in strength/Of the hopes that thy blessings bestow/From the hopes
and ambitions that sprang at thy feet/To the thoughts of the past as we go.”
Reflecting on the emotions that accompany graduation, Schwartz said, “I found
reason to believe that we’ll never forget what this place has meant to us, nor
what we have meant to each other.”

Delivering the first of two humorous Ivy Orations, James
Wilsterman ’10 offered three life lessons. First, that “exclusive” is always
a synonym for “awesome”: “Everything becomes infinitely more appealing when you
can bar a large part of the population from ever participating.” Second, that
Harvard Square restaurant Boloco serves up “inspired smoothies.” (“Now would be
a great time to take a photo,” Wilsterman said, holding his smoothie cup
aloft). And third, that at Harvard “we learn to lie to everyone, even our best
friends.” (“Don’t worry, investment banks love
history of art and architecture concentrators.” “What? Of course I’m coming to your a cappella jam tonight.”) “Between
these three lessons and all of that fantastic clichéd advice we have heard
today,” Wilsterman said, “we are now perfectly prepared for the real world.”

The second Ivy Orator, Alexandra Petri ’10, exhorted her
classmates to consider elevator safety. With a Harvard diploma earned, she warned,
“this would be the worst possible time to trip into an open elevator shaft and
waste all that investment.” Elevators, she said, are like life: “They go up,
they go down, and sometimes you feel like you’re stuck.” The elevator metaphor
can hold lessons for interpersonal relationships, Petri offered: “What if
you’re stuck in an elevator with another person and you run out of
conversation?” And ultimately, she said, “Death is like an elevator.
Eventually, it comes.”

(Scroll down for videos of these speeches.)

The Class Day ceremonies also include the conferring of the Ames Awards, which honor “dedication, selflessness, courage, and humility.” They are given in memory of Richard Ames ’34 and Henry Ames ’38, who died attempting to save their father, Robert Ames ’07, who was washed overboard in a storm off Newfoundland during a transatlantic race in 1935.

Travis’s mother died on the day of his high-school graduation, yet “instead of searching for pity or attention,” Travis “put his entire being into serving others,” said one of the nomination letters, as excerpted in the ceremony. Travis led several initiatives at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, as well as “furthering commuity development in the Bronx and preparing rural students for college in Kenya,” and will spend next year in Kenya on a Michael Rockefeller Scholarship, working to reduce intertribal violence.

Havice was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps the same day she received the Ames Award. After entering Harvard in 2001, she took a leave of absence and spent five years as an active-duty Marine in locations that included Iraq and Afghanistan. Back at Harvard, she maintained a full course load while working a “mind-boggling” 80 hours a week as a staff sergeant for the Marines ROTC program at Boston University, and volunteering alongside Travis at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter.